Gerald Sylvester wrote:
I'm about 14 hours into my IFR training with 11 of those on the sim.
I had to go to LAS for work (non-aviation) for 3 weeks. I came back
and was dying to go flying. Well I expected the worst. I hadn't
flown a plane in nearly 2 months since I was working on the IFR stuff.
First time flying approaches in a plane. At night. I expectedt to be
near dead afterwards. According to my CFII, I would have been close
to the PTS standards. yea, it put a big smile on my face.

The biggest problem I had was going from the IFR part to the
visual on short final. The night time might have had something
to do with it but regardles I had a hard time adjusting. I presume
this is somewhat normal. Any words of wisdom?

Gerald

I was lucky and never found this to be a problem. I took most of my
training at night due to work obligations, but in retrospect this was
probably good as it makes flying in the daytime so much nicer! The only
problem I had in transitioning was when I didn't take the time to form a
mental image of what I would see. For example, let's say you are
crabbing 10 degrees to the right on final. If you mentally expect to
look 10 degrees left of the nose for the runway, then it all makes more
sense when you look out the window. One time I was on a real approach
into, I think, Lynchburg, VA, and I was holding something like 20
degrees of crab due to very strong wind. When I first broke out, I was
slightly disoriented as the runway wasn't where I expected it to be, but
I pretty quickly caught on to what was what. I now try to always think
through where the runway will be when I look up from the hood (or break
out of a real overcast) and I find the transition very painless.


Matt